Art Metropole

#11914

Michael Snow: Photo-Centric

Date

2014

Publisher

Yale University Press

Format

Artists' Books

Size

8 × 10 inches

Length

60 pages

Genre

Photography, Essays, Catalogue

Edited by Adelina Vlas; With essays by Adelina Vlas and Michael Snow.

Canadian filmmaker and artist Michael Snow (b. 1928) is known as a pioneer of conceptualist and multimedia practice. His seminal film Wavelength (1967), described as a “45-minute zoom,” investigates the relationship between time and space, a subject the artist has explored throughout his career in a variety of mediums. Although considered one of the most important experimental filmmakers of his generation, Snow is less known in the United States for his visual art, including photography. Michael Snow: Photo-Centric focuses on a selection of the artist’s photographic work from 1962 to the present. The book considers Snow’s interest in late modernism’s self-reflexivity and, specifically, his exploration of how the mechanics of photography affect perception, cognition, and consciousness. Essays by Adelina Vlas and the artist himself consider the importance of Snow’s photographic work within his larger practice, its connection with and continuation of modernist ideas, and its experimental quality within the history of the medium.

Adelina Vlas is assistant curator for modern and contemporary art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Michael Snow is a filmmaker, musician, visual artist, composer, writer, and sculptor.